livebug’s Neighborhood

Guess who just lost her two front teeth?

Right in time for all the photos. Whoo hooo! Very cute. And, of course, it has prompted all kinds of holiday theme song singing:

Last night she put her tooth under her pillow. This was the fifth time for the tooth fairy to visit our house. And this visit was especially exciting, because there was a near collision with the fairy and the shelf elf.

 My mom bought this book for our family last week. She and my dad are in town for the holidays. And my mom had heard about this book. There is an elf who hangs out around the house and watches Margaret and her behaviour. Then he reports back to Santa. My dad keeps referring to the elf as "the snitch" but Margaret named him "Red".  Red goes to see Santa every night, and then comes back in the morning and finds a new place to sit. Margaret has found this daily search for Red to be VERY exciting. And it is sweet to watch. I think it will be a fun tradition.

The other Christmas tradition that we have around here is pulling out the Holiday Books and reading them together. And that means another year of "The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey"

Oh my goodness. Have you read this book? I first read it when I was a nanny. And I couldn't make it all the way through without sobbing. Now that I have a child, it is even more effective. I have to trade off reading with Kevin, to make it through the whole thing. But this year, we were both going through the kleenex. And Maggie just sat there rolling her eyes. And my mom and dad sat there watching and laughing at us the whole time. (actually, my dad teared up, too --sap!) A photo was taken. We hammed it up a little (but not much)

We're off to Colorado. This is what happened last time we were there for Christmas: Tom Dixon dug a snow fort and we all watched.

And speaking of Colorado, I have been totally converted to Christmas music by Michael's annual playing of John Denver. Have I ever told you that Silent Night regularly makes me cry? When I was seven, I went with Ken Rush, Nicky, and Frances, to sing carols in the old folks home where their grandma worked. That song always takes me back to that very hard time in my life, in a way that is very visceral and without words or thought. But it is also such a very beautiful song I can't help but love it.

I don't get my hair cut nearly often enough. There's always just other stuff that needs doing more. I can't replicate what John does, so I took photos for you all to see because it won't look like this until next time. I'm angling my head around so you can see the cut, not because I'm trying to find my better side. It doesn't look like much, but it took him 45 minutes.

When I first got to the States, I immediately noticed the hair. I mean immediately. I went to the bathroom at LAX and saw the differently shaped toilets and the women primping. They didn't have hair, they had HAIR.  Culture Shock Moment #1.

 

The teachers in my program exchange gifts. The first year took me unawares. Last year I forgot. But this year I was on the ball. In return, I got a haul of candles. Don't get me wrong, I love candles. I usually light one when I'm having a bath. Along with bubble bath, warm socks, and Dunkin Donuts gift cards, candles are presents that get used. I just don't understand this particular candle.  I asked Michael to explain it to me, but he was no help.  

You have to be crazy or desperate to go clothes shopping at the mall the week before Christmas, but that's where I'm headed shortly. I'm currently well over my maximum allowable weight, and since I hate shopping and tend to do it only as a treat when I've met some weight goal or other, all my favorite clothes are kind of tight.

I think about my weight pretty much every day and have since I was a teenager. I used to feel a wee bit bad about that, because feminists are supposed to be above that sort of thing. But then I realized that while feminism can mean many different things, it doesn't have to include adding more guilt to the considerable baggage we already carry around. After all, there are lots of reasons not to want that spare tire.

Much as this mess isn't ideal, there are many more pressing things to get done. Homework, music practise, karate, eat dinner, read, play. Plus it's not like the rest of the house is especially orderly. So I guess this is a battle I'm just not going to pick right now.

Last weekend was a very festive one. We got all of our Holiday celebrating packed into two days. On Saturday, we went to our local farm and experienced Christmas like they did in Victorian times. There were crafts to make,

cookies to sample, Father Christmas to visit, (Maggie told him all about the light saber she wants for Christmas, which was news to me... Good thing we made that stop!)  a puppet show to watch, and of course, the biggest event of all, the search for the YULE LOG! So fun. There were about 100 kids running all over the farm looking for that thing. It took about 30 minutes of searching, but they finally found it.

Then the next day, we drove up to Oakland to meet Kevin's parents so that we could be together to see....Tap Dancing Santas!!!

  I mean, how could I miss that???? I cried, of course. So weird, that. I can't help it. It is like a reflex or something...

AND the santas were not only tap dancing, but they also did the hula, the can can, some sort of reindeer rap that involved the children, there was russian dancing with spoons, they belly danced, and macarenaed  (That last one deeply, deeply disturbed Maggie, who ran from the macarena line and jumped into Kevin's lap, and wouldn't participate for the rest of the show. When asked what the problem was, she stuck out her bottom lip and said, "too much booty shaking"! huh.)

The tap dancing rabbi did not bother her. But for me, the Santas that donned reggae hats with fake dreads were a little freaky. 

The entire show ended with a group limbo and conga line, and that was that. No more Santa related booty shaking until next year.

I'll let the tap dancing Santas take this blog entry out with a bang. (As much of a bang as you can get when the chipmunks are singing in the background, at least....)

   
   

Well, in case any of you might possibly be wondering, here is the latest book I found on the "new books" shelf at my downtown public library. Alister McGrath's recent book Heresy: A History of Defending the Truth is a readable, accessible history of the early Church's encounters and reactions to heretical movements. McGrath, a former Oxford professor and now chair of theology, ministry and education at the University of London, is also co-author along with his wife Dianna of The Dawkins Delusion: Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine.
    Writing from the standpoint of a Christian apologist representing what I call "enlightened orthodoxy", McGrath sets out to dispel what he sees is a myth perpetuated by Dan Brown and to a lesser degree Gnostic Christianity scholar and writer Elaine Pagels- that the early heresies such as Gnosticism were really dominant beliefs in the first few centuries of the early Church but were squashed by the religious leaders in Rome. McGrath shows the reader that the early heresies were not just fringe movements, but "dead end" developments which, due to various shortcomings of their respective core beliefs, probably in all likelihood would never have been adopted by Church. Marcian's Christianity, by removing Christianity from its Jewish roots, not only cast aside the Hebrew Bible but also denied Christianity its needed historical context. It was also dualistic and antisemitic. Gnosticism, besides also being dualistic, possessed an underlying current of misogyny, (as exemplified in the Gospel of Thomas which states that a "woman cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven"). And lastly, heresies like Donatism, were mainly the product of regional concerns and would probably lose their significance outside of their particular setting.
    McGrath also reasons that based on the historical evidence, prior to about the 4th Century, the Church in Rome was not powerful enough to stamp out heretical views, even if it wanted to. Many of the Church Fathers who wrote against the heresies of the day did so as individual Christians and not as appointed representatives of a dictatorial Catholic Church. According to McGrath, orthodoxy was a slow, decentralized, collaborative process. It was not a product of imperial decree.
    I enjoyed his book. While I do like the works of writers like Pagels, McGrath does a superb job taking arcane theological arguments and making them readable and understandable for lay people like myself. If you end up reading his book, feel free to check out two other books by traditionalists. Misquoting Truth by Timothy Paul Jones takes a critical look at the "historical Jesus" movement in modern Biblical scholarship. Another one to check out is Darrel L. Bock's 2006 The Missing Gospels:Unearthing the Truth Behind the Alternative Christianities.
    
 

Maggie and I get a week off for Thanksgiving. A WEEK! Unbelievable. We start school in August, so maybe that is why. But still, it is a wonderful time to travel. And Kevin has two days off, so he just takes three more, and there you have it. A vacation!

This year we decided to go to the desert. It is about a 12 hour drive. I have never been to Death Valley, or to Las Vegas (unless you count a two hour layover a visit. -- to Las Vegas, not Death Valley) So, we thought we would go and enjoy Vegas in all of its kitschy glory, after a couple of days of camping in Death Valley.

Here we are in Death Valley

Maggie had sand in her shoes for weeks after this trip. Perhaps this is why: Death Valley is sort of a land of extremes. There is the lowest point in the United States,
There are huge salt flats, and a place called the devil's golfcourse, And there are huge craters, that make it look like a moon scape or something. Very photogenic. Speaking of photogenic, can I just take a moment to comment on those last three photos? Ummmm, the Campbell family is full of a bunch of hambones. That is all. Maggie came by it natural. Poor thing. What have we done to her?

We left Death Valley and got into Las Vegas kind of late. We slept in a princess castle.

It looked great from the outside. ( I mean, okay, not great. But REALLY kitschy, which was the goal...) Sadly, upon entering, we were met with a wall of cigarette smoke. And the ringing and clanging of slot machines. Very tawdry. But we were there, and sleepy, so we stayed. Plus, we had a plan to attend The Tournament of the Kings the next day, so we wanted to be close. If I had wanted, I could have gone to see Thunder from Down Under that very night! Wheeeee! Or Louie Anderson. Whoopie! Instead, we went to our room and passed out. When we got up, we discovered that coffee makers were not provided in our room. Oh no. They were not. And we are coffee drinkers. Mama's gots to haves her coffee. So I went down the elevator and walked into the smokey, clanging, depressing lobby/casino and went in search of starbucks. As I walked though the maze of slot machines, it was SO depressing to  see all of these people at 8 AM, sitting there with a cigarette, and a beer, putting coin after coin into the machine. Sigh.

Coffee in Vegas is twice what it is in the real world. Did you know that? Uh huh.

We walked around and saw New York New York, and the MGM lions. We wandered around and got very very lost and confused. One time, Maggie, who had been drinking bottled water all day, had a pee pee emergency, and I honestly thought we weren't going to make it to the bathroom in time. That is how confusing and maze like the stupid casinos are.

We had a pool behind our hotel that Maggie had been eyeing all morning. For some unknown reason, it was open at the end of November. It was NOT warm. But Maggie insisted that it was. So. We went swimming. No, wait, let me amend that. Maggie and I went swimming. Kevin was the only sane one in the bunch. The lifeguard was wearing jeans. And shoes. And a hoodie. And a windbreaker! Smart man. (unless he had to dive in and save someone, of course, then perhaps it wouldn't be so smart...)

We basically just sat around in the hotel room for a while after that. It was too smokey to go downstairs, and we had dinner/tournament reservations at 6pm. The tournament was cheesy. But fun. I will give it that. There was a lot of gratuitous flesh. And I mean on the men. The guards for King Arthur wore leggings, pleather thongs, and no shirts. Perhaps they were the Australian Hunks from Down Under doing a side job. I dunno. Anyway, there was jousting, and mead drinking, and lots of fanfare. Just as expected. And that. Was Vegas.

The next morning we got up, had our ten billion dollar coffees and got the hell out of Dodge. I needed some nature, and we found it just an hour outside of Vegas in a place called "The Valley of Fire". It was Nevada's first State Park, it was amazing. Kind of like Sedona, with all of the red rocks, and pink sand, and rock formations. It was glorious.

Oh, yeah, and these unbelievable petroglyphs. Just, all over the place. You could go up and touch them (but we didn't) And they were 4,000 years old. And sort of mysterious. They really aren't sure about the people who created them. We stayed in the Valley of Fire to see the sunset, and then went back through Vegas to see the dancing water fountains of Bellagio at night, which were worth it, I must say. While we were at Bellagio, waiting for the water fountain show, we visited the largest chocolate fountain in the world. No joking.It was really tall. With three varieties of chocolate. Completely over the top. Of course. And then we got in the car and headed home. We got home just in time to celebrate Thanksgiving with our family. It was perfect.